Rahm Emmanuel, Obama’s Chief of Staff, May Not Be That Bad

It’s not true. His father is an Israeli and was active in the Irgun, the terrorist group founded by Menachem Begin which famously bombed Jerusalem’s King David Hotel.

I don’t know what the old man’s politics on Israel are today (not all Irgunists were rightwingers). I suspect that, if he was still a rightwinger, he would not have produced a bunch of liberal kids. (Rahm’s brother, the Jeremy Piven one, writes often on HuffPo and is a total Hollywood liberal).

Anyway, what I know about Emanuel on Israel is that he was a key player in getting President Clinton to embrace Oslo and to hold the Rabin-Arafat signing ceremony. I remember standing on the lawn and watching George Stephanopoulos and Rahm Emanuel all teary over “the handshake.”

As a Member of Congress, Emanuel was not all that hawkish either. He supports Israel (so do I) but he definitely supports the peace process too. My guess: he’ll be the one encouraging Obama to go for an Israeli-Palestinian deal the first year. And, when the rightwing Jews complain, he’ll tell them to stick it up their a**.

And they will.

I think as Muslims we have to realize that there may have been many Zionists in the past who wanted Palestine to be erased from maps, but they have come to realize that isn’t going to happen so they are settling for peace instead. I also believe that the Zionists are getting older and dying out similar to the Republican party. Their racist and ignorant ideas are getting old and dying with them. The younger generation is different and part of the “hope for change” movement.

Ah, it’s just poorly written. Clearly if I knew that his brother was a source of inspiration for a role played by Jeremy Piven, then the rest of this wouldn’t be anything new. Perhaps it’s not confusing to regular readers of Mr. Rosenberg. My bad!

from the Wayne Madsen Report (subscriber only) http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/ Rahm Emanuel ! November 6, 2008 — Obama faced with security problem at outset of transition process WMR has learned from informed U.S. intelligence sources that prospective Barack Obama White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel has an active FBI counter-intelligence file maintained on him. Emanuel’s rise to the Chief of Staff position may pose a significant security problem for President-elect Obama if the FBI insists on conducting the full background security investigation normally required for senior White House officials. Questions about Emanuel’s links to the Israeli intelligence service, the Mossad, were allegedly so great that President Bill Clinton was forced to dismiss Emanuel from the White House staff in 1998. One of the FBI agents who discovered Emanuel’s dealings with Israeli intelligence was, according to our sources, the late FBI counter-terrorism Assistant Director John O’Neill. O’Neill retired after being set up in a smear operation involving a temporarily stolen brief case in 2001. O’Neill and another FBI agent who still works for the bureau and shall remain nameless at this point to protect him and his career discovered that Emanuel was heavily involved in the decision to place intern Monica Lewinsky close to President Clinton. O’Neill accepted the top security position for Kroll Associates at the World Trade Center. O’Neill was killed in the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center. WMR has also reported that O’Neill was a close friend of slain retired Houston CIA station chief Roland V. “Tony” Carnaby, who was similarly investigating Israeli intelligence operations in the Houston area when Houston police shot and killed him last April. Emanuel reportedly had knowledge of Israeli intelligence penetration of White House communications systems and Lewinsky, in sworn testimony before the Office of Independent Counsel, stated: “He [Clinton] suspected that a foreign embassy [it is now known that embassy was that of Israel] was tapping his telephones, and he proposed cover stories.” Lewinsky continued, “If ever questioned, she should say that the two of them were just friends. If anyone ever asked about their phone sex, she should say that they knew their calls were being monitored all along, and the phone sex was just a put on.” WMR has learned from U.S. intelligence sources that Emanuel was discovered to be part of a political intelligence and blackmail operation directed against Clinton by Israel’s Likud Party and Binyamin Netanyahu to sink Clinton’s proposed Middle East peace deal. We have also learned that the FBI investigation of Emanuel is part of a file code-named the “Mega file.” “Mega” is a reference to a top-level Mossad agent in the Reagan administration who was said to have run a number of Israeli agents,

“Liberal” and “conservative” are buzz words designed to obscure reality. Lieberman still has a “liberal” voting record BUT when it comes to Israel its different. Emmanuel is no different.
Labor zionism is actually worse then the likudniks version. The devil lies in the details.

I blogged about this earlier. There are zionists out there who consider him a Jewish traitor (one referred to him as a “House Jew”) because he played a major role in getting Rabin and Arafat to shake hands on the White House lawn.

Interestinly enough, Uri Avnery was a member of Irgun, and he later left and became a strong advocate for peace, forming Gush Shalom (the peace party) in Israel. His writing is always interesting and I learned a ton of history from him, stuff I didn’t find in my textbooks. I guess the author is right, not all Irgunists are right-wingers.

Sadly enough Palestinian woman and children are still dying from Israeli bombings , malnutrition and being chased out of their homes to make way for bars and shopping mall. Dont be so naive to think this man has an ounce of good in him just because he is hated by few jews it does not change anything at all try and look into the eyes of Palestinian orphans with severed limbs and tell them that there will be peace one day. Its easy for you to forgive this man zionist or not but be a Palestinian and see it wont be possible at all. Try and go out there and work for a charity aid and spend a day with these ppl and see the world from their view and you will realise the word peace even if it does come will have nothing to offer.

I am really concerned about what is happening in Palestine . Why is every human life not valued equally? When one American or Israeli dies it is a national event but when over 800 Palestinians dies and over 3000 are wounded it is nothing almost as if they are insects. All mankind is living under the same earth and should be equally valued.
War is something decided by politicians. I wonder what they would do if their families were fighting against each other. Would they be so eager for war then? NO, I think not. They don’t care because it is not their families which are dying. It is not their children who are suffering. It is not their families who will be having post traumatic stress disorder for life. The families of politicians are still going to be enjoying the luxury they always have.
What is happening in the Middle East is just so evil? How are these murders being allowed to go to Church and pray. They should be in jail for killing innocent children. They are worse than common criminals. At least common criminal are jailed. Why is President Bush, Israel military being allowed to walk free when they have inhumanely killed innocent people? They are making decisions based on suspicion only. They bomb schools based on suspicion. For example, if someone called us and said there are criminals in New York City . Would that be a lie? No, there are criminals and bad people in every corner of the world. Does that mean we should bomb the whole city in the off chance of catching the criminals? This is so completely illogical.
If someone murders your family and they are Chinese, do you go and hate all Chinese people and go to China and murder all Chinese people? NO you do not!. That is what is happening in the Middle East . There is just hatred and more hatred being perpetuated. War does not stop aggression, it perpetuates hatred. No one wins in war. Everyone loses everything. Both countries will lose their infrastructure. Only pride is lost.
It is perpetuating more terrorism. The Israeli military wants to catch Hamas but does Hamas care about innocent lives? NO. So why is Israel using innocent children as bargaining chips to control Hamas. It is so silly.
In order to escalate peace talks between Israel and Palestine , there needs to be psychologists present in order to objectively point out how ridiculous their hatred is for each other. The psychologists needs to point out common grounds in how similar they are to each other. No religious condones murder but here they are murdering each other in the name of war. Religion should be used to unite rather than divide. They should view each other as brothers and sisters rather than enemy. This would require a sociologist to change their mindset. This may take many sessions but innocent people should not be used as a weapon when politicians disagree. Meanwhile, UN can take over the land or they can unite as one country where both sides will rule equally. Please I beg you to act quickly because I know you care.